Lecturers - University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute

The University of Michigan (UM) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) have established a Joint Institute (JI) in Shanghai with a commitment to build a world-class academic institution with educational and research missions. The UM-SJTU Joint Institute invites applications for lecturers in several disciplines. With its unique academic mission in China, the JI offers an extraordinary academic environment. The JI has been given a high degree of autonomy to model itself on world-class US universities. The students are among China’s best.

My own DEM(Discrete Element Method) program's solution for static problem seems strange.

I use my program to calculate the displacement of a cantilever under static pressure:

1. it seems my program shows convergence for static problem as the mesh gets denser. As the mesh grows denser(that means the particle becomes smaller), the displacement(of y direction)  of the free tip becomes smaller.

2. if the particle is big, the displacement of the free tip is greater than the theoretical solution, but if the particle is small enough,  the displacement gradully becomes smaller than the theoretical solution.

Professor Ed Berger, Univeristy of Virginia Mechanical Engineering, is featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education for his use of web technologies and, in particular, "video solutions" for teaching undergraduate mechanics courses. See http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i34/era01301.htm.  Or contact Berger at berger@virginia.edu.  Ed hasn't used this approach for all undergraduate mechanics courses as yet, but the potential is there. 

Since I am an alum of the University of Minnesota, when I was a PhD student I lived only a few blocks from the site of yesterday's catastrophic bridge collapse in Minneapolis.  The statics analysis of a truss is almost the first thing learned by every undergraduate engineering student, and appears to be relevant here.  It is interesting to see words like "fatigue crack" and "vibrations" in the news .  In light of such events, never has there been a better time to step forward and emphasize the importance of mechanics in daily life!  Each time we drive across a bridge we are relying